MIAMI — Last week, new NBA commissioner Adam Silver took his first step toward dropping the hammer on "tanking," a term run amok with little resistance until the league's top official tried his best to stop it cold.

This is what Silver told reporters after an appearance in Boston: "The coaches and players, or some subset of that group, trying to lose, I don't think that's going on anywhere in the NBA."

At the beginning of the month, former Toronto Raptors general manager Bryan Colangelo admitted to trying to tank during the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, also in Boston. But we didn't need his validation to know it was happening. Masking tanking is difficult to do.

But here's the kicker: It's fine.

The system doesn't need an overhaul. The lottery doesn't need an extreme makeover. This has been the most overblown subject in the NBA this season.

The fans who say they care? They don't actually care. Now, every time the Nuggets win, I get a handful of messages lamenting the fact that said win would "cost them lottery balls."

Philadelphia 76ers fans aren't kicking up much dust as much as they are kicking back, watching the losses roll in and hoping it nets them a franchise-changing talent. Ditto in Boston, Milwaukee and Utah. Even Los Angeles Lakers fans have warmed up to the notion that a season of pain could set them up for a brighter future with a budding star.

And yet, unlike the NFL, it's not a straight line from being the worst team to the top pick. In fact, the worst team has had a dickens of a time trying to secure the top pick over the years.

All that having the fewest wins does is give you a 25 percent chance of being The One. The last time the actual worst team in the NBA got the top pick was 2004, and it has happened only four times since the lottery was started in 1985. That is the real tragedy in this saga. So many times the wrong teams are benefitting. Franchises in worse shape scratch their heads on draft lottery night wondering why misfortune knocked on their door and stuck them with a pick that will only marginally help.

Silver's point that players and coaches don't try to lose comes with some top-flight examples this season.

The Phoenix Suns and Raptors were preseason scrap-heap teams, earmarked by nearly everyone to be contenders vying for top-pick status. Only, Phoenix is battling for a playoff spot in the rugged Western Conference. Toronto has risen all the way to third in the Eastern Conference.

Coaches and players are hard-wired to try to win. If a GM wants to lose now to win in the future, that's a path I'm more than willing to watch him take without judgment.

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